Among many people there is a longstanding desire to experience real world physical environments or spaces at a remote location. This remote experiencing has been tried to accomplish using, over time, celluloid movies, black and white television, color television, 3D television and, more recently, Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) such as those used frequently in Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) applications.
The problem with all these technologies lies in the fact that the viewer does not feel like she is present at the remote location because she is distracted by her own real environment around her, or her feeling of presence is broken when she moves or needs to control the system. Even with stereoscopic panoramic solutions the user is very limited in experiencing a remote location because she can only look around herself and she cannot look at the remote environment from a different angle without breaking immersion.
Patent publication U.S. Pat. No. 6,522,325 B1 describes a telepresence system that uses modular interlocking arrays of micro cameras. The cameras are on rails, with each rail holding a plurality of cameras. These cameras, each locked in a fixed relation to every adjacent camera on the array and dispersed dimensionally in a given environment, transmit image output to an associated storage node, thereby enabling remote viewers to navigate through such environment with the same moving light reflections and shadows that characterize an actual in-environment transit. The outputs of these micro cameras may be sent to viewers at remote terminals, interactive wall screens, or mobile image appliances. Each remote viewer, through a graphical user interface (GUI), can navigate through the environment, enabling seamless movement through the event.